Ava
Chapter Forty-Seven
Five Years Ago
The dress was too tight.
So tight that I could scarcely breathe. But how? I’d been to all the fittings. My measurements had stayed the same. My diet immaculate. My workout routine consistent. I definitely wasn’t pregnant.
So then why did it feel like I’d need someone to take a pair of scissors and cut me out of this damn dress in the next twenty seconds?
I needed to relax, I told myself. I always got myself worked up when things felt out of control. And there was nothing more unpredictable than a wedding.
I couldn’t calm myself down because I had no way of knowing if everything was perfect.
I hadn’t gotten to look over the flower arrangements one last time.
I had no idea if the cake was what we’d wanted, or if the baker had mixed it up with some raunchy bachelorette party dessert.
I didn’t even know if the groomsmen had properly fitting suits.
If you left things to other people, there was always room for error. And on my wedding day, the unknown of it all settled into me like a bone deep panic that couldn’t be made better.
I had only one chance in life to do this right. Just one. I refused to end up like my parents, no matter what. Separated, embittered, too caught up in their grievances at the world that they’d neglected to even find joy in raising a child.
There was a way to do things in life, and I’d set out to live up to my ideal. You find a partner who’s compatible—that was the most important. It didn’t have to be fireworks and butterflies. It didn’t have to be roses and cards.
It just had to work. Like a partnership. You had to know that they were going to fulfill one end of the bargain, and you the other. You had to agree on the important things in life and leave no room for error or mistakes. That was the key to a lasting marriage.
Not the way my parents did it. A few dates, my mother getting pregnant, the two of them playing house for a year or two before deciding that maybe this real world with crying infants and bills on the table wasn’t so ideal after all.
But I’d been careful.
And who better for me in the entire world than my best friend? Sweet Matthew, who never took pleasure in arguing. Who made the best of every situation. Who loved his family, his town, and me with everything he had in him.
He was perfect. We were perfect together. We’d always gotten along, always. So, when he asked me to marry him, it should’ve been the easiest thing in the world to say yes.
It should’ve been.
“I can’t breathe.” The words tumbled out of me as I threw open the door to the veranda. “I can’t.”
I was shaking my head furiously, bracing myself on the railing to look out at the country club estate when Will’s voice hit me, as sobering as the spring air.
“Ava?”
He was behind me, sitting on the bench, watching me with curious eyes.
Will.
I forced myself to regain composure, refusing to humiliate myself in front of him.
He was always composed. Or maybe so detached that nothing could ever make him waver without his consent. I’d admired him for it our whole lives, then spent the better part of my life trying to emulate it.
“Will,” I said, taking a steadying breath before moving closer to him. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh, I’m the best man,” he said, taking a sip of his beer.
“Right. But I meant here,” I said, then stared at the drink in his hands. “Alcohol before the wedding?”
“Relax, Aves.” He rolled his eyes. “Just one.”
But I wasn’t worried. Will never lost control. He was like me in that way.
“Are you—” I started, desperate to just talk to him, and let that unwavering composure he never seemed to be without calm my nerves. “Having a good time?” I finished lamely.
“I guess.” He frowned. “I mean, I’m happy for you guys. But honestly, the day has been a lot of waiting around and people coming at me with cameras. I can’t say I’ll be sorry to get it over with.”
I nodded mutely, feeling at a loss for what to say next.
Stupid.
I was always embarrassing myself in front of him. He made me breathless and giddy, like a schoolgirl. It was dangerous and exhilarating all at once, and I’d spent the last few years trying to tip precariously around the edge of basking in that feeling and realizing the power it had over me.
Matthew was safe. He did not make my head cloud over with girlish emotions. He didn’t make my breath hitch when he looked at me a second too long.
And most of all, he never made me think of throwing caution to the wind and running wherever my heart led me.
That’s why he was the right choice for me. That’s the reason it would work between us.
And that’s the reason my heart was breaking when I saw Will sitting there, like a sign from the universe to stop, for once in my damn life, doing what my deranged, rigid brain viewed as the right thing.
I sucked in a breath, inhaling the scent of freshly cut grass and promises waiting to be made.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Will was on his feet in an instant, crossing the veranda until he stood beside me against the railing. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said breezily, stretching my fingers out at my side. “Just nerves. Big day, you know.”
“I can only imagine.” He snorted, a cynical expression playing across his features. “Sometimes I don’t know why people do this at all.”
“Marriage?” I asked, distracting myself from my own panic. “Or weddings?”
“Both, I guess. I don’t know,” Will said. “It just seems like a lot of risk, and for what?”
“What, are you saying that you’d never get married?” I stared at him, dissecting the faraway look in his eyes.
He was always like that. Detached, faraway. Seemingly impossible to reach.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, taking a sip of beer. “I’m just saying I can’t imagine it. Marriage is for people like you and Matthew. Not people like me.”
“People like you?” I felt angry. “What does that even mean, Will? You’re allowed to be happy.”
“Who says marriage would make me happy?” he countered, staring me dead in the eyes.
“Do you think it wouldn’t?”
“Doesn’t for most people.”
“That’s not fair. Your parents are happy.”
“I guess. But why risk it?”
“Risk what?”
“Why would you ever risk spending the rest of my life with the wrong person?”
His words froze me in place.
Oh God. Does he see right through me?
Does he know how fraudulent I feel standing here in this dress, with all this love for him in my heart when I’m about to go marry his brother?
“Oh God.” My knees trembled. “Okay, Will, I can’t do this. I can’t be here. I need to leave.”
He paled, face construing into a grimace.
“Oh, fuck, Aves, no. I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
He was standing right beside me, and I wanted him to reach out for me, to steady me on my feet, but that wasn’t Will. It wasn’t in him to do something like that.
“I was being a cynical shithead,” he hurried to explain. “Weddings bring it out in people. I was just talking to you the way we always talk. I really didn’t mean to freak you out. You and Matthew are—”
“Wrong.”
“What?”
“We’re wrong for each other,” I said out loud for the first time. “I’m wrong for him.”
“No, Aves, you’re not,” he said adamantly, trying to repair what he thought he broke. “You’re just scared. Matthew? He loves you so much—”
“But I don’t—” I couldn’t say I didn’t love Matthew. I loved him with all my heart. I couldn’t imagine a single day of my life without him.
But it just wasn’t the same burning I felt when I looked at Will.
And I was so afraid of the future, the unknowns, the unpredictability of life, but something about Will made me want to walk headfirst into the fire.
“You don’t what, Aves?” Will urged.
Did he know? Was he waiting all this time for me to admit it? Had he only stood aside for Matthew’s sake?
“Aves, just tell me what’s going on—”
“I love you,” I blurted in one breath. “I have always, always loved you. I can’t—I can’t imagine my life without you.”
His body went rigid, face wiped clean of any trace of emotion. Like a statue, he became farther away than he’d ever been before.
“You love me like a brother,” Will said, still as stone.
“No, Will. I’m in love with you.”
“You’re marrying my brother.”
“I can’t,” I said helplessly.
“You are.” His mouth was a straight line, set and determined, unwavering as always.
“I can’t go out there and vow before everyone to love him forever. I can’t do that to him.”
“Do that to him?” Will clasped both hands atop his head as he paced. “Aves, what you’re trying to do would kill him. Do you understand that? It would kill him.”
Will was more rattled than I’d ever seen him. He was scared, like I was. Some part of me was relieved to see him finally looking so rawly human.
“It would hurt,” I agreed. “But not as much as it would for him to waste his life on the wrong person.”
I reached out to touch his arm. “He’d forgive us, Will.”
He pulled away sharply before I even reached him, and I recoiled.
“Us?” Will scowled. “What the hell do you mean, us? I’m not the one breaking his heart here, Ava. That’s all you.”
“But.” I felt my lip tremble, understanding sinking in. “But don’t you love me?”
I’d read it wrong. I’d read it all wrong.
I thought the choice had been mine. Thought Will had stayed away out of respect. I thought that if he knew the truth about how I felt, everything might be different.
But I was wrong.
“Ava, it’s never been like that between us, and you know it.”
I didn’t.
“It’s always been you and Matthew.”
“Matthew was always my best friend. You were the one I loved.”
The one I still love. The one I always will.
“Tell me right now you never felt anything for me.” Traitorous tears streamed down my face. “There were times I know you did.”
“Ava,” he said, taking a step toward me, eyes finally alive with emotion I used to crave to see him staring at me with.
But it wasn’t love burning passionately in his eyes, finally proving he was capable of feeling after all.
It was hate.
“You are going to go out there and marry him, like you told him you would. Like you promised.”
“I—” I started. I can’t. I can’t.
“If you do this to my brother, if you walk out on him now, I’ll never forgive you.”
And then I would lose both of them. And the Hughes as well. I would be losing all the family I had in one fell swoop.
And selfish or not, I just couldn’t bear it.
So I did it.
With lead feet and a pit in my stomach and the strangest feeling in my chest that told me, even as Matthew smiled at me from the other end of the aisle, I was betraying him in some inexcusable way, I married him.
But it didn’t matter.
Because Will never forgave me anyway.